In the film we hear the testimonies of Carmen Gloria Morales, also known as Aunt Panchita, as well as Adolfo: both of them are residents of Renaico who have a special connection to the river. Members of the “Save the Renaico River Collective” organization also speak, in the documentary, about their different community-based projects, and they present their research—the product of two years of work—about the reasons that the river has reached such low levels. The documentary was made in 2016.
The objectives of the film are to inform Renaico residents about the reasons why the river was running dry, and to remind them about the affective connection they have with the river and get them to commit to care for and defend it.
Image and editing: Miguel Rozas – Photography : Pablo Ocqueteau
Music: “Soy culpable” by Weychan feat RIGO, Lyrics: Mauricio Gutierrez, Track: Rodrigo Prado – 2016
Renaico residents wrote messages to the river. Some of these messages were pasted on the outside of plastic bottles and others were placed inside them. These bottles were then hung from the bridge over the river.
This project was carried out in collaboration with the Renaico Recycling Association, a group of women who collect plastic bottles and other objects in order to recycle them. These bottles are often found on the banks of the Renaico River, because tourists don’t always dispose of their trash properly. The bottles were hung over the river over the course of the day, and then they were taken down.
Image and editing: Miguel Rozas – Photography : Pablo Ocqueteau – Music: “Memorias” by Weychan feat RIGO, Lyrics: Mauricio Gutierrez, Track: Rodrigo Prado – 2016
Approximately one hundred children from three schools—La Nobel Gabriela, the Liceo Técnico San Alfonso, and the Colegio de Tolpán—came together on the banks of the river to do the wave, as people do during sporting events. It was a metaphorical action to bring about the restoration of the river to its normal levels.
Image and editing: Miguel Rozas – Photography : Pablo Ocqueteau – 2016
texts by two girls on the action of art:
Let’s go, we can do it! Let’s do the wave so life and peace can return to the Renaico River. Let’s do it for the Renaico River.
I want the Renaico River to return to what it was, before it dies out. If it dies out, no one will be able to swim there. In the past, the Renaico River was full of life, but now it’s weaker, so: Let’s do the wave to bring back the Renaico River!!!
The Renaico River originates in the foothills known as the Cordillera de Pemehue, just to the west of the Andes. It is approximately 130 km long, and serves as the border between two regions of Chile: the Araucanía and the Biobío. It then flows into the Vergara River. The Renaico and its tributaries cross the towns of Mulchén and Nacimiento, in the Biobío Region, and then the towns of Collipulli, Angol, and Renaico, in the Araucanía Region.
The Renaico River is located in Mapuche territory, which is also known as Wallmapu. This land was recognized as the sovereign, independent property of the Mapuche people by the Spanish crown in 1641 [1], after the Mapuche fought against colonization for one hundred years.
In the 19th century, the Republic of Chile carried out a military occupation [2] of Wallmapu, which ended with the annexation of Mapuche territory to the Chilean state. During this period, interest arose in planting non-native trees in Chilean soil, “to stop erosion and provide urban centers and their industrial activity with wood and fuel” [3]. This erosion was due to the extensive deforestation of native tree species that had been taking place since the Spanish colonial period. Between the 16th and the 19th centuries, forests were burned “in order to clear lands for agriculture and the grazing of domestic animals” [4]. Extensive areas of forest were cut down to build homes in urban centers and fuel the country’s burgeoning mining industry. At the turn of the 20th century, the first plantations of eucalyptus and pine trees were established in Chile. Once the logging company known as Sociedad Forestal Mininco was founded, in the Biobío Region in 1947, the area around the Renaico River basin entered an era of increased extractivism.
Radiata pine plantation
In the background, a large pine plantation. Small eucalyptus trees in the foreground
Currently, the logging industry exists in Chile from the Maule Region all the way south to the Los Lagos Region.
However, many people are replanting native tree species. Meanwhile, the Mapuche population has been fighting for the restitution of its native land—and against violent police repression by different governments of Chile—since the restoration of the country’s democracy in 1990.
On the banks of the Renaico River, in the Collipulli area, there are still a number of Mapuche communities, despite the fact that many have migrated to the cities—with the dissolution of the social fabric that this migration often entails.
(3) See Pablo Camus, Sergio A. Castro & Fabián Jaksic, Historia y política de la gestión forestal en Chile a la luz del pino insigne (Pinus radiata). Invasiones biológicas en Chile: Causas globales e impactos locales, 2014
(4) See Juan Armesto, Carolina Villagrán, & Claudio Donoso, Desde la era glacial a la industrial: La historia del bosque templado chileno, 1994, and Miguel Escalona Ulloa & Jonathan R. Barton, ‘Oro verde’: la invención del paisaje forestal en Wallmapu/Araucanía, sur de Chile, 2021.
For the museum opening, ten old photos were donated by local residents and organizations, including the Renaico Municipal Library and the Morales Fernández family. The photo collection has grown over time, thanks to great interest in the community in remembering the past of the Renaico River. We have received a number of images thanks to the Facebook organization “Retrorecuerdos de Renaico.”
The Renaico River Community Water Museum collects old documents, generates new narratives, and carries out a series of activities to defend and care for the river itself.
Over the last 15 years, the Renaico River’s current has weakened considerably, mainly due to excess use of water by area logging companies, as well as private citizens who have dammed it off for irrigation purposes. It has experienced other environmental threats as well.
At one time, the Renaico River was a source of fish, economic sustenance, and stories for human and non-human beings; it continues to be a source of water for them. And at this moment, the community is rising up to defend the river.
The museum was founded in 2016 in the town of Renaico, in Chile’s Araucanía Region. This institution highlights the place of the Renaico River as the community’s cultural and natural heritage; its waters are the patrimony of all persons.* With the creation of the museum’s collection, our hope is to strengthen the affective ties between the inhabitants of the town of Renaico and their river, with all the commitment to its care and defense that those ties should entail.
The Community Water Museum was opened at the banks of the Renaico River. The opening included music bands performaces and a live painted mural, alongside with the exhibition of photographs and the screening of the documentary “Save the Renaico River” and the two collective actions “a Wave” and “Messages in bottles”. The museum’s collection was created by neighborhood associations, youth groups, local artists, and schools.
Once it opened, presentations about it were made at universities, cultural events, and international conferences with other associations focused on the defense of water resources. The museum does not yet have a physical location, but this website offers information about its collections, as well as research on the Renaico River and community-based activities.
I come from Pemehue, in the foothills of the Andes Mountain range. It is there that melted ice and rain flow down from the folds of these mountains and coalesce in my body, which moves alongside trees, caves, flowers, and the stones and pebbles of my banks. The araucaria, cypress, and coigüe trees come to meet me, even when they’re tired and weak, since their roots are barely able to keep their soil moist and filter the sediment that I bring. Many native trees have disappeared, as has the community’s ability to keep the ground fertile. Mountain vizcachas, pumas, condors and pudus drink my water, even as their populations have dropped due to a lack of seeds, mushrooms, and other organisms to eat. The same goes for our human collaborators: many of them have had to leave, though some have stayed, drinking the same water that their ancestors once did.
My currents flow through large plantations of pine and eucalyptus, whose roots are very thirsty. This is where I drastically lose strength, as the soil becomes less moist and turns into a hard, red clay. This transformation affects the movement and nutrition of the more sensitive fish swimming alongside me, like catfish, silversides, and perch.
At that point, what’s left of me branches off into multiple streams and falls in the valleys, which give life to vegetables that are eventually eaten by people far to the north of me. Before I join the Vergara River, I’m still able to offer refreshment to the inhabitants of Renaico in the summers, even though I’m exhausted and faint.
The social collective known as Save the Renaico River is a social-environmental organization founded on December 22, 2013 in the administrative district of Renaico, in southern Chile. It was legally incorporated on January 5, 2015. It is a group of mostly young people who came together, in the spirit of environmental activism and community organizing, to confront a series of challenges affecting the Renaico River. These challenges include drought and pollution, as well as the possibility of a hydroelectric dam being built there.
The main objective of the organization is to protect the entire Renaico River basin.
Since its inception, the organization has taken on different tasks and multiple commitments, including: community education, with appearances at local community gatherings and schools in the town of Renaico and surrounding communities; research, writing reports making presentations, and disseminating information about local issues; activism, creating spaces for local community members to express their dissatisfaction with the current situation of their local environment; arts and culture, with historical and passion projects in the local area and throughout the country; and legal actions against polluters.
The group has offered environmental education courses, recycling workshops, and cultural events, in community spaces, schools, and universities all over Chile. The collective celebrates Renaico River Day every December 22, the anniversary of its founding, with cultural events that artists from all over the country participate in.
The Renaico River is the backbone of our territory, given that it has supported the development of human and non-human life. In short, the river takes care of us. This aquatic spinal column is a gathering space for different communities of human beings, animal and vegetable species, and others. We understand this diversity in a holistic, unfragmented way. For simplicity’s sake, we have grouped the descriptions of the Renaico River’s social ecosystem into different communities and topics. Most of the species we describe in what follows are located in the Malleco National Reserve.
We have grouped the description of the social ecosystem of the Renaico River by communities or themes for a better reading comprehension:
1. Forest, animal and fungi communities
2. Community of birds
Most of the species described below are located in the Malleco National Reserve.
Renaico is located in the southern part of central Chile, in the province of Malleco, which itself is part of the Araucanía Region. Renaico is the northernmost district of the Araucanía Region, on the border with the neighboring region to the north, known as Biobío.
In the past, when the Mapuche people freely inhabited the area, including the banks of the Renaico River, the river was known as Tolpán. This word came from two words in the Mapuche language of Mapudungun: thol, meaning “in front of,” or “facing,” and pangui, the native word for the pumas that inhabited the area. During the so-called “Occupation of Araucanía” in the 1860s, the soldier Cornelio Saavedra—who led this genocidal campaign against the Mapuche—tried to build a fort on the banks of the Renaico River. But it wasn’t until January 23, 1884 that the town as we know it today was founded, thanks to the rail line that was constructed between Renaico and Victoria, during the presidential administration of Domingo Santa María (which lasted from 1881 to 1886).
The town has an official population of 10,000 people, and its economy depends primarily on cattle, agriculture, logging, and the cultivation of fruits and vegetables.
